


Closed Circuit

by dustlines



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Character Study, Non-Explicit, POV Dean Winchester, Past Character Death, Post-Series, Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 21:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21483433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustlines/pseuds/dustlines
Summary: There's no more tigers anymore, and isn't thatridiculous? Even angels are now an extinct species, though no one ever knew to campaign to save them.A/N: A gentle story about loss in a world with no more gods.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	Closed Circuit

**Author's Note:**

> This is a quiet and sad story, written with love and taking place post-s15. 
> 
> **CW**: gently referred to, offscreen major character death that is not shown and that takes place before this story begins.

* * *

Castiel has died and been reborn so many times that when it happens again, everybody who's used to him resurrecting expects another resurrection to happen. They wait, like they always have: pretending to not feel hope, but feeling it anyway.

But then... months pass... and then a few years... and then a decade... and... Castiel is still gone.

Sam and Dean try to get Chuck to do something, but he's merely human now, as well as an utter sellout. His newer, non-prophetic paperbacks are choppy and out of character, perhaps selling only for nostalgia's sake. Even reading about Castiel in the _Supernatural_ books Chuck has produced in the years since The Loss is empty, devoid of any sense of who Castiel actually was.

Amara wants to help, but it's not her domain. Resurrections simply don't happen anymore, she explains, not for anyone or for anything.

"The world's a closed circuit now," she says, not unsympathetically, and she's right. All the other dimensions got blown out of existence in the final confrontation with Chuck. This one remaining dimension doesn't hold the first ever Earth, but it's the only Earth left. They've all learned the hard way that you can't kill god, or even mortally wound him without consequences. All they could manage to do was weaken Chuck enough to render him powerless.

Amara slips on her sunglasses to leave the Bunker, but before she does, she rests the painted nails of her hands briefly on Dean's shoulders and says, with full, meaningful eye contact, "I'm truly, _truly_ sorry for your loss."

That night, Dean hunches his back in the cold and tells himself they at least made out far better than they could've, given how _the whole of existence_ had been hanging in the balance. He tells himself at least they got rid of the monsters, of Heaven, and of Hell, and of Purgatory, and... and even of the Empty.

(He wishes the Empty had existed for just a _little_ bit longer, but it hadn't, and now it's gone. All that was _in_ the Empty is _gone_.)

The neck of Dean's beer bottle is lukewarm, and yet slick from the sweat on his palms. He tips it back and downs the last few drops that have been hiding for their lives in the dark green, glass corners of their rounded prison. They fall into his dry mouth, hardly enough to even taste them, nowhere near enough to numb him. The moon above is pale yellow and slipping behind a cloud. Feels like it might rain. It's the closest thing to anything magic that Dean has seen in years, but it's just the weather.

"Are you coming back inside?" Sam peers out from the Bunker's front door, his hair grown out now, just a little bit gray, and tied back in a loose tail.

Standing in the grass outside the door where guests are supposed to walk through when visiting (or returning), Dean swallows, as though his mouth is more full than it is. He pretends to take another sip of the empty glass bottle in his hands, then says, "Nah, I'm gonna wait for a bit."

Sam doesn't close the door right away. Instead, he looks up at where the moon and the clouds are mingling above. "It's a bit chilly... don't you think?"

"Yup," Dean doesn't look back at his brother, only keeps holding onto his bottle, shoulders tense. "Might rain."

"How long you gonna wait?" Sam is speaking too nervously, like he's expecting Dean to bolt any second now, though there's really no place for Dean to go in this world without magic and monsters, and so there's no point to that.

Dean shrugs noncommittally, not answering. It takes a few seconds, but Sam eventually pulls his head back inside and closes the door, leaving Dean alone with his thoughts.

A sudden fervor hits Dean then, and he curls back his arm and hurls his empty bottle against a nearby tree. His heart speeds up as it shatters, reminding him of buckshot, of the spray of rock salt, of the old days and their adrenaline rushes that truly meant life or death.

After, there is quiet.

Then, abruptly, a sharp inhale. Dean silences himself before it can escalate. His eyes burn.

Rage, he thinks. It must be rage. It must be. How else is he supposed to feel?

He goes over to the tree and crushes a bit of the broken glass around it with his heel, really grinding it down into the dirt. It disappears with little effort, though makes the mud shimmer.

Dean thinks he shouldn't have done that. The monsters are gone, freeing up his focus enough that even he's starting to think of bigger, more global, human issues, like recycling and not killing off all the trees.

Remorse hits him in the gut. A headache blossoms behind his eyes. He breathes through his teeth and rubs the bridge of his nose with calloused hands.

Yeah, he thinks. Yeah, this is simply about the tree he just hurled glass at. The Amazon rain forest is nearly empty now. People have to avoid killing what's left. Sam so often goes on and on about how no one can fully replace what's gone, not ever. They can only fill the loss with other things. They have to think about what's still left, because it's easy for lost things to never come back. There's no more tigers anymore, and isn't that _ridiculous_? Even angels are now an extinct species, though no one ever knew to campaign to save them.

Crouching to begin plucking broken glass out of the root system around the tree, Dean instead... pauses. He takes a slow breath, holds it, then feels his head sink down into his open palms.

Stillness fills him. The Empty is gone, but people still feel emptiness. There's no Cas inside of a feeling, though.

The inside of Dean's palms are wet. He curses. He breathes. He clutches his overgrown bangs in both hands. He listens to the nervous chirp of a cricket below him that he'd scared with the sound of shattering glass.

It's been years. There's no more resurrection in this world, not even any kind of afterlife anymore. There's one roll of the dice, and then they fall from the table. Cas is gone.

Dean hadn't even gotten to say "sorry," much less a real goodbye. Still, he doesn't know how to stop waiting, and neither does Sam, who's left Cas' old room in pristine condition, as though he's going to come back to it one day.

Eventually, the rain comes, the only visitor to arrive tonight. There's no sounds of wind funneling around wings, no purr from approaching vehicles, not even the swish of a tan coat over quiet footsteps through the grass. Dean goes back inside only when he's soaked and shivering.

The night is cold and dark and empty.

But not the Empty that Dean wants it to be.

.

2019.11.18

.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Comments appreciated! Thank you! 🖤


End file.
